Facebook's Final #ZUCKUP
Ever since Facebook became an indispensable aspect of our lives, there has been a growing sense of foreboding that something is not quite right, a premonition that eventually we would need to make a total break with the site. In recent weeks, however, the importance of the social network for fomenting insurrections abroad has led many of us to conclude that Facebook was on the verge of transcending its narrow commercial concerns, that it was on the brink of elevating itself into a neutral platform for social revolution. Yesterday, our hopes were finally dashed.
On March 29, Facebook callously deleted the organizing page for the Third Intifada, a call for a Palestinian popular uprising to shake off Israel's brutal occupation that had over 200,000 supporters. The Third Intifada's Twitter and Google-owned YouTube pages still exist. Facebook's act of suppression is an unforgivable #ZUCKUP, may it be the last.
The first major #ZUCKUP was the commercialization of friendship. The second disturbing #ZUCKUP was the remorseless pursuit of privacy-invasive technologies. The third #ZUCKUP, the one that will be remembered as the final nail in Facebook's coffin, is the cynical attempt to stand in the way of history by blocking the people's worldwide movement toward self-governance and democracy.
Let us now kill Facebook with this #ZUCKUP campaign. Pull your allegiance, delete your account and watch for the day that Facebook implodes spectacularly.
In committing communal Facebook suicide, we will open up the possibility of new activist innovations, improved social apps for revolt, fresh perspectives on how to turn online passion into real world action.
154 comments on the article “Facebook's Final #ZUCKUP”
Displaying 51 - 60 of 154
Page 6 of 16
Anon
As soon as Diaspora is up and running I'm migrating and I'll use the time until then to try to convince my friends and family to do the same.
Anon
As soon as Diaspora is up and running I'm migrating and I'll use the time until then to try to convince my friends and family to do the same.
God
it's funny that there is a 'share on FB' widget at the bottom of this article with the quote "Help us spread the word..." something along the lines of using their own tools to destroy them?
a monopoly is a monopoly, be it analog or digital...
God
it's funny that there is a 'share on FB' widget at the bottom of this article with the quote "Help us spread the word..." something along the lines of using their own tools to destroy them?
a monopoly is a monopoly, be it analog or digital...
Anonymous
Can someone please answer the important point? Is it true that the page or comments carried calls for 'attacks on Jews' and that the organisers refused to take them down?
I despise the deliberate confusion of anti-Israel and antisemitism as much as anyone, but if it's true that it descended into that kind of incitement, then this is a very different case than simply 'they shut us down because we criticised Israel'. Will someone from Adbusters please comment on this to explain clearly what was on the page? Thanks.
Anonymous
Can someone please answer the important point? Is it true that the page or comments carried calls for 'attacks on Jews' and that the organisers refused to take them down?
I despise the deliberate confusion of anti-Israel and antisemitism as much as anyone, but if it's true that it descended into that kind of incitement, then this is a very different case than simply 'they shut us down because we criticised Israel'. Will someone from Adbusters please comment on this to explain clearly what was on the page? Thanks.
Propa
The page was in Arabic and had 200,000 supporters. The only translations being put forward are by pro-Israel organizations who are obviously cherry-picking the worst.
Go on any website, and pick the worst comments, and you will find some that are distasteful. Does that mean the whole page should be deleted? How do we know that those comments were not posted by people in Israel to justify taking down the page?
The larger point is that a legitimate movement to end oppression in Palestine has been stymied by Facebook.
Do you want to live in a future where Facebook/Twitter/Google decide which revolutions will be tolerated?
Propa
The page was in Arabic and had 200,000 supporters. The only translations being put forward are by pro-Israel organizations who are obviously cherry-picking the worst.
Go on any website, and pick the worst comments, and you will find some that are distasteful. Does that mean the whole page should be deleted? How do we know that those comments were not posted by people in Israel to justify taking down the page?
The larger point is that a legitimate movement to end oppression in Palestine has been stymied by Facebook.
Do you want to live in a future where Facebook/Twitter/Google decide which revolutions will be tolerated?
Anonymous
But if 'the worst' were as bad as suggested, then that's pretty bad, no? Where do you draw the line? Is it anything goes, or how would you set the bounds of acceptability? Would you, running a website, censor incitement to attack British Pakistanis, for example, by the BNP? Or would you say que sera sera?
Even if the worst comments were placed there by some kind of agents provocateurs (by the way, there's hardly a large number of rabidly Zionist Israeli Jews who speak and write Arabic...), the organisers should still surely have taken them down.
I don't want to be black and white about this, not knowing what was written. What I'm saying is I don't know how others can be so black and white about it. There's a debate to be had about where the censorship line should be drawn. I don't trust Facebook at all, but I also think there are nuances to look at here.
(I think your position that an uprising has been single-handedly stymied by Facebook is rather over the top, by the way. Palestinians will rise up because their lives are intolerable, not because of Facebook.)
Anonymous
But if 'the worst' were as bad as suggested, then that's pretty bad, no? Where do you draw the line? Is it anything goes, or how would you set the bounds of acceptability? Would you, running a website, censor incitement to attack British Pakistanis, for example, by the BNP? Or would you say que sera sera?
Even if the worst comments were placed there by some kind of agents provocateurs (by the way, there's hardly a large number of rabidly Zionist Israeli Jews who speak and write Arabic...), the organisers should still surely have taken them down.
I don't want to be black and white about this, not knowing what was written. What I'm saying is I don't know how others can be so black and white about it. There's a debate to be had about where the censorship line should be drawn. I don't trust Facebook at all, but I also think there are nuances to look at here.
(I think your position that an uprising has been single-handedly stymied by Facebook is rather over the top, by the way. Palestinians will rise up because their lives are intolerable, not because of Facebook.)
Pages
Add a new comment